2011 State of the College - Mount Aloysius College

hundreds of search engines at their fingertips Of course, we all know they are different, they are a different generation—they are the Millennial Generation, not the “Greatest”, or the “Silent” or the “Baby Boomer”, or even “Gen X”. And we will have a panel discussion this afternoon to talk about what those generational differences mean for how we all do our jobs.

And we will have a panel discussion tomorrow focused just on technology and education, and we will keep up that practice every time we have a staff development day—to try and teach each other how best to understand and to communicate with our students and with each other.

We have taken two other steps to facilitate the dialogue and the learning process.

First, the Mt Aloysius “Social Media Lab” will open in the basement of Alumni Hall sometime in September.

This lab will serve as a learning facility for interested students, a production ground for faculty and staff, and a studio in which the message of Mount Aloysius can be distributed globally.

We have already purchased all the equipment that will allow our students--or any of you--to film three camera interviews in a controlled setting with advanced recording, prompting, lighting and set control. The lab will provide green screen capabilities allowing editors to inlay custom backgrounds or graphics to match the speaker’s message. The set will allow for up to eight people to be interviewed simultaneously. The lighting and audio equipment also creates the opportunity for select professional audio pieces and photography to be done in-house.

Post-production equipment includes multiple video editing PCs for student and communications staff use.

These computers will feature the most up-to-date multimedia software, as well as storage capacity, applications and other accessories that enhance and maintain video files and the editing process.

The “studio” will not be confined to the designated studio space. The listed equipment was chosen specifically to allow both trained and untrained students/staff to record outdoors and in any other external location. This includes mobile lighting, audio, and video. Our overall goal is for the lab to meet and expand the multimedia goals of the college as well as keep pace with the technology of our competitors.

Our lab will give us the capability to produce (including, but not limited to): high quality interviews, recorded addresses, web videos, instructional videos, commercials, professional photography, student pieces, news pieces, audio tracks, voiceovers, visual classroom, presentations, outdoor footage, event coverage, DVD/CD production, faculty/staff productions, even our own public access TV shows.

We should all be proud that our nursing department is the most cutting edge—in terms of technology—of any school in Central and Western PA, and that 61% of all our classrooms are “smart” classrooms. But if we are